vladimir nabokov lectures on the phis ocr

8/8/2019 Vladimir Nabokov Lectures on the phis Ocr

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Vladimir Nabokov's Lecture on

"The Metamorphosis"

Of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is

discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain

unkindled. "To take upon us the mystery of things"—w hat King Lear so wistfully says for

himself and for Cord elia— this is also my sugg estion for everyone wh o takes art seriously. A

poor man is robbed of his overcoat (Gogol's "The Greatcoat," or more correctly "The Carrick");

another poor fellow is turned into a beetle (Kafka's "The Me tamorph osis)—so what? There is no

rational answ er to "so what." W e can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how

one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene,some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor

dismiss. Beauty plu s pity—th at is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is

beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner

dies with the matter, the world d ies with the individual. If Kafka's "The M etamorphosis" strikes

anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having

joined the ranks of good and great readers.

I wa nt to discuss fantasy and reality, and their mutual relationship. If we co nsider the "Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" story as an allegory—the struggle between Good and Evil within every

ma n— then this allegory is tasteless and childish. To the type of mind that would see an allegory

here, its shadow play would also postulate physical happenings which comm on sense knows tobe impossible; but actually in the setting of the story, as viewed by a commonsensical mind,

nothing at first sight seems to run counter to general hum an experience. I wan t to suggest,

however, that a second look shows that the setting of the story does run counter to general human

experience, and that Utterson and the other men around Jekyll are, in a sense, as fantastic as Mr.

Hyd e. Un less we see them in a fantastic light, there is no enchantm ent. And if the ench anter

leaves and the storyteller and the teacher remain alone together, they make poor company.

The story of Jekyll and Hy de is beau tifully constructed, b ut it is an old one. Its moral is

preposterous since neither good nor evil is actually depicted: on the whole, they are taken for

granted, and the struggle goes on betw een two em pty outlines. The enchantm ent lies in the art of

Stevenson's fancywork; but I want to suggest that since art and thought, manner and matter, are

inseparable, there must be som ething of the same kind abou t the structure of the story, too. Let

us be cautious, how ever. I still think that there is a flaw in the artistic realization of the story—if

we consider form and content separately—a flaw which is missing in Gogol's "The Carrick" and

in Kafka's "The Metam orphosis." The fantastic side of the setting—Utterson, Enfield, Poole,

Lanyon, and their London—is not of the same quality as the fantastic side of Jekyll's

hydization. There is a crack in the picture, a lack of unity.



"The Carrick," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and "The Metamorphosis": all three are commonly

called fantasies. From my poin t of view, any o utstanding w ork of art is a fantasy insofar as it

reflects the unique world of a uniqu e individual. But wh en people call these three stories

fantasies, they merely imply that the stories depart in their subject matter from what is commonly

called reality. Let us there fore exam ine what reality is, in order to discover in what mann er and

to what extent so-called fantasies depart from so-called reality.

Let us take three types of men walking through the same landscape. Num ber One is a city man

on a well-deserved vacation. Nu mb er Two is a professional botanist. Num ber Three is a local

farmer. Number One, the city man, is what is called a realistic, commonsensical, matter-of-fact

type: he sees trees as trees and knows from his map that the road he is following is a nice new

road leading to Newton, where there is a nice eating place recommended to him by a friend in his

office. The botanist looks around and sees his environm ent in the very exact term s of plant life,

precise biological and classified units such as specific trees and grasses, flowers and ferns, and

for him, this is reality; to him the world of the stolid tourist (who cannot distinguish an oak from

an elm) seems a fantastic, vague, dream y, never-nev er world. Finally the world of the local

farmer differs from the two others in that his world is intensely emotional and personal since he

has been born and bred there, and knows every trail and individual tree, and every shadow from

every tree across every trail, all in warm connection with his everyday work, and his childhood,

and a thousand small things and patterns which the other two— the hum drum tourist and the

botanical taxonomist—sim ply cannot know in the given place at the given time. Our farmer will

not know the relation of the surrounding vegetation to a botanical conception of the world, and

the botanist will know nothing of any importance to him about that barn or that old field or that

old house under its cottonwoods, which are afloat, as it were, in a medium of personal memories

for one wh o was born there.

So here we have three different worlds— three m en, ordinary men w ho have different realities—

and, of course, we could bring in a number of other beings: a blind man with a dog, a hunter witha dog, a dog with his man, a painter cruising in quest of a sunset, a girl out of gas— In every

case it would be a world completely different from the rest since the most objective words tree,

road, flower, sky, barn, thumb, rain have, in each, totally different subjective

connotations. Indeed, this subjective life is so strong that it makes an empty and broken shell of

the so-called objective existence. The only wa y back to objective reality is the follow ing one:

we can take these several individual worlds, mix them thoroughly together, scoop up a drop of

that mixture, and call it objective reality. W e may taste in it a particle of madness if a lunatic

passed through that locality, or a particle of complete and beautiful nonsense if a man has been

looking at a lovely field and imagining upon it a lovely factory producing buttons or bombs; but

on the whole these mad particles would be diluted in the drop of objective reality that we hold up

to the light in our test tube. M oreover, this objec tive reality will contain someth ing that

transcend s optical illusions and laboratory tests. It will have eleme nts of poetry, of lofty

emotion, of energy and endeavor (and even here the button king may find his rightful place), of

pity, pride, passion—and the craving for a thick steak at the recommended roadside eating place.

So when we say reality, we are really thinking of all this—in one drop—an average sample of a

mix ture of a million ind ividual realities. And it is in this sense (of hum an reality) that I use the



term reality when placing it against a backdrop, such as the worlds of "The Carrick," "Dr. Jekyll

and Mr. Hyde," and "The Metamorphosis," which are specific fantasies.

In The Carrick" and in "The Metamorphosis" there is a central figure endowed with a certain

amount of human pathos among grotesque, heartless characters, figures of fun or figures of

horror, asses parading as zebras, or hybrids betw een rabbits and rats. In "The Carrick" thehuman quality of the central figure is of a different type from Gregor in Kafka's story, but this

hum an pathetic quality is present in both. In "Dr. Jekyll and M r. Hyde" there is no such hum an

pathos, no throb in the throat of the story, none of that intonation of "'I cannot get out, I cannot

get out,' said the starling" (so heartrendin g in Sterne's fantasy A Sentimen tal Journey). True,

Stevenson devotes many pages to the horror of Jekyll's plight, but the thing, after all, is only a

superb Punc h-and-Ju dy show. The beauty of Kafka's and Gogol's private nightmares is that their

central human characters belong to the same private fantastic world as the inhuman characters

around them, but the central one tries to get out of that world, to cast off the mask, to transcend

the cloak or the carapace. But in Stev enson's story there is none of that unity and non e of that

contrast. The Utterson s, and Pooles, and En fields are mea nt to be comm onplace, everyday

characters; actually they are characters derived from Dickens, and thus they constitute phantasms

that do not quite belong to Stevenson's own artistic reality, just as Stevenson's fog comes from a

Dick ensian studio to envelop a conventional L ondo n. I suggest, in fact, that Jekyll's ma gic drug

is mo re real than Utterson's life. The fantastic Jekyll-and-H yde them e, on the other hand, is

supposed to be in contrast to this conventional L ondon , but it is really the differen ce betw een a

Gothic m edieval them e and a Dick ensian one. It is not the same kind of difference as that

between an absurd world and pathetically absurd Bashmachkin, or between an absurd world and

tragically absurd Gregor.

The Jekyll-and-Hyde theme does not quite form a unity with its setting because its fantasy is of

a differen t type from the fantasy of the setting. There is really nothing esp ecially pathetic or

tragic about Jekyll. W e enjoy every detail of the ma rvelous juggli ng, of the beau tiful trick, but

there is no artistic emotional throb involved, and whether it is Jekyll or Hyde who gets the upper

hand remain s of supreme in differen ce to the good reader. I am speaking of rather nice

distinctions, and it is difficult to put them in simple form . W hen a certain clear-thinking but

somewhat superficial French philosopher asked the profound but obscure German philosopher

Hegel to state his views in a concise form, Hegel answered him harshly, "These things can be

discussed neither concisely nor in French." W e shall ignore the question whethe r Hegel w as

right or not, and still try to put into a nutshell the difference between the Gogol-Kafka kind of

story and Stevenson's kind.

In Gogol and Kafka the absurd central character belongs to the absurd world around him but,

pathetically and tragically, attempts to struggle out of it into the world of humans—and dies in

despair. In Stevenson the unreal central character belong s to a brand of unreality diffe rent from

that of the world around him . He is a Goth ic character in a Dick ensian setting, and wh en he

struggles and then dies, his fate possesses only con ventional pathos. I do not at all mean that

Stevenson's story is a failure. No , it is a min or masterp iece in its own conv entional term s, but it

has only two dimensions, w hereas the Gog ol-Kafka stories have five or six.



Born in 1883, Franz Kafka came from a Germ an-speaking Jewish fam ily in Prague,

Czech oslovakia. He is the greatest German writer of our time. Such poets as Rilke or such

novelists as Thom as Man n are dwarfs or plaster saints in comparison to him. H e read for law at

the German university in Prague and from 1908 on he worked as a petty clerk, a small employee,in a very Gog olian of fice for an insurance co mpan y. Hardly any of his now famo us works, such

as his novels The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926) were published in his lifetim e. His greatest

short story "The Metamorphosis," in German "Die Verwandlung," was written in the fall of 1912

and published in Leipzig in October 1915. In 1917 he coughed blood, and the rest of his life, a

period of seven years, was punctuated by sojo urns in Central Europ ean sanatorium s. In those

last years of his short life (he died at the age of forty), he had a happy love affair and lived with

his mistress in Berlin, in 1923, not far from me. In the spring of 1924 he we nt to a sanatorium

near Vienna wh ere he died on 3 June, of tuberculosis of the larynx. He was buried in the Jew ish

cemetery in Pragu e. H e asked his friend M ax Brod to burn everythin g he had written, even

published m aterial. Fortunately B rod did not comply with his friend 's wish.

Before starting to talk of "The Metamorphosis," I want to dismiss two points of view. I want to

dismiss completely Max Brod's opinion that the category of sainthood, not that of literature, is

the only one that can be applied to the understanding of Kafka's writings. K afk a was first of all

an artist, and although it may be maintained that every artist is a manner of saint (I feel that very

clearly myself), I do not think that any religious implications can be read into Kafka's

genius. The other matter that I wan t to dismiss is the Freudian point of view. His Freudian

biographers, like Neider in The Frozen Sea (1948), contend, for example, that "The

Metam orphosis" has a basis in Ka fka's complex relationship with his father and his lifelong

sense of guilt; they contend further that in mythical symbolism children are represented by

vermin— which I doubt—and then g o on to say that Ka fka uses the symbol of the bug to

represent the son according to these Freudian postulates. The bug, they say, aptly ch aracterizes

his sense of wo rthlessness be fore his father. I am interested here in bugs, not in humb ugs, and I

reject this nonsense. K afk a himself was extremely critical of Freudian ideas. H e considered

psychoanalysis (I quote) as "a helpless error," and he regarded Freud's theories as very

approximate, very rough pictures, which did not do justice to details or, what is more, to the

essence of the matter. This is another reason why I should like to dismiss the Freud ian approach

and concentrate, instead, upon the artistic moment.

The greatest literary influen ce upon K afk a wa s Flaubert's. Flaube rt wh o loathed pretty-pretty

prose would have applauded K afka's attitude towards his tool. Ka fka liked to draw his terms

from the language of law and science, giving them a kind of ironic precision, with no intrusion of

the author's private sentiments; this was exactly what Flaubert's method through which he

achieved a singular poetic effect.

The hero of "The Metam orphosis" is Gregor Samsa (pronounced Zam za), who is the son of

middle-class parents in Prague, Flaubertian philistines, people interested only in the material side

of life and vulgarians in their tastes. Som e five years before, old Samsa lost mo st of his money ,

whereupon his son Gregor took a job with one of his father's creditors and became a traveling

salesman in cloth. His fathe r then stopped wo rking altogether, his sister Grete was too young to



work, his mother w as ill with asthm a; thus young Gregor not only supported the whole family

but also found for them th e apartmen t they are now liv ing in. This apartment, a flat in an

apartment house, in Charlotte Street to be exact, is divided into segments as he will be divided

himse lf. W e are in Prague, central Europe , in the year 1912; servants are cheap so the S amsas

can afford a servant maid, Anna, aged sixteen (one year younger than Grete), and a

cook. Grego r is mostly aw ay traveling, but wh en the story starts he is spending a night at homebetw een two business trips, and it is then that the dreadful thing happen ed. "As Gregor Sam sa

awoke one morning from a troubled dream he found himself transformed in his bed into a

mo nstrous insect. He wa s lying on his hard, as it were arm or-plated, back and wh en he lifted his

head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into corrugated segments on top of

wh ich the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off comp letely. His

numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, flimmered [flicker +

shimmer] helplessly before his eyes.

"What has happened to me? he though t. It wa s no dream....

"Gregor's eyes turned next to the window—one could hear rain drops beating on the tin of thewind ow sill's outer edge and the dull wea ther made him quite melan choly. W hat about sleeping a

little longer and forgetting all this nonsense, he thought, but it could not be done, for he was

accustomed to sleep on his right side and in his present condition he could not turn himself

over. Ho wev er violently he tried to hurl himself on his right side he always swung back to the

supine position. He tried it at least a hundred tim es, shutting his eyes * to keep from seeing his

wriggly legs, and only desisted when he began to feel in his side a faint dull ache he had never

experienced before.

*Nabokov's notes in his annotated copy: "A regular beetle has no eyelids and cannot close its eyes—a beetle with

human eyes." About the passage in general h e has the note: "In the original Ge rman there is a wonderful flowing

rhythm here in this dream y sequence of sentences. He his half-awake— he realizes his plight without surprise, with

a childish accep tance of it, and at the same time he still clings to human mem ories, human experience. Themetam orphosis is not quite complete as yet."

"Ach Gott, he thought, w hat an exhausting job I've picked on! Traveling about day in, day

out. M any m ore anxieties on the road than in the office, the plague of wo rrying about train

connections, the bad and irregular meals, casual acquaintances never to be seen again, never to

beco me intim ate friends. The hell with it all! He felt a slight itching on the skin of his belly;

slowly pushed himself on his back nearer the top of the bed so that he could lift his head more

easily; identified the itching place which was covered with small white dots the nature of which

he could not understand and tried to touch it with a leg, but drew the leg back immediately, for

the contact made a cold shiver run through him."

Now what exactly is the "vermin" into which poor Gregor, the seedy commercial traveler, is so

suddenly transform ed? It obviously belong s to the branch of "jointed leggers" (Arthropo da), to

wh ich insects, and spiders, and centipedes, and crustaceans belong. If the "num erous little legs"

mentioned in the beginning mean more than six legs, then Gregor would not be an insect from a

zoological point of view. But I suggest that a man awakening on his back and finding he has as

man y as six legs vibrating in the air mig ht feel that six was sufficien t to be called num erous. W e

shall therefore assume that Gregor has six legs, that he is an insect.



Next question: what insect? Com mentators say cockroach, which of course does not make

sense. A cockroach is an insect that is flat in shape with large legs, and Grego r is anything b ut

flat: he is convex on both sides, belly and back, and his legs are small. He approache s a

cockroach in only one respect: his coloration is brow n. That is all. Apart from this he has a

tremendous convex belly divided into segments and a hard rounded back suggestive of wing

cases. In beetles these cases conceal flimsy little wings that can be expand ed and then may carrythe beetle for miles and miles in a blunde ring flight. Curiously enough, Greg or the beetle nev er

foun d out that he had win gs under the hard covering of his back. (This is a very nice ob servation

on my part to be treasured all your lives. Som e Gregors, som e Joes and Janes, do not know that

they have wings.) Further, he has strong mandibles. He uses these organs to turn the key in a

lock while standing erect on his hind legs, on his third pair of legs (a strong little pair), and this

gives us the length of his body, wh ich is about three feet long. In the course of the story he gets

gradually accustomed to using his new appendages— his feet, his feelers. This brown, convex,

dog-sized beetle is very broad. I should imag ine him to look like this:

In the original German text the old charwoman calls himMistkafer, a "dung beetle." It is

obvious that the good wo m an is adding the epithet only to be friendly . He is not, technically, a

dung beetle. He is merely a big beetle. (I mu st add that neither Gregor nor K afk a saw that beetle

any too clearly.)



Let us look closer at the transformatio n. The change, though shocking and striking, is not quite

so odd as might be assumed at first glance. A comm onsensical com mentator (Paul L. Landsberg

in The Kafka Problem [1946], ed. Angel Flores) notes that "When we go to bed in unfamiliar

surroundings, we are apt to have a moment of bewilderment upon awakening, a sudden sense of

unreality, and this experience must occur over and over again in the life of a commercial traveler,

a manner of living that renders impossib le any sense of continuity." The sense of reality dependsupon c ontinuity, upon duration. A fter all, awak ening as an insect is not much dif ferent from

awakening as Napoleon or George W ashington. (I knew a man wh o awoke as the Emperor of

Brazil.) On the other hand, the isolation, and the strangeness, of so-called reality— this is, after

all, someth ing which constantly characterizes the artist, the genius, the discoverer. The S amsa

family around the fantastic insect is nothing else than mediocrity surrounding genius.

PART ONE

I am now going to speak of structure. Part one of the story can be divided into seven scenes orsegments:

Scene I: Gregor wakes up. He is alone. He has already been changed into a beetle, but his

hum an imp ressions still mingle with his new insect instincts. The scene ends with the

introduction of the still human time element.

"He looked at the alarm clock ticking on the chest. Good L ord ! he though t. It wa s half-past six

and the hands were quietly moving on, it was even past the half-hour, it was getting on toward a

quarter to seven. Had the alarm clock not gone off? ... The next train went at seven o'clock; to

catch that he would need to hurry like mad and his samples weren't even packed up, and he

himself w asn't feeling particularly fresh and active. And even if he did catch the train hewouldn't avoid a row with the boss, since the firm's messenger would have been w aiting for the

five o'clock train and would have long since reported his failure to turn up." He think s of

reporting that he is sick, but concludes that the insurance doctor would certify him as perfectly

healthy. "And would he be so wro ng on this occasion? Gregor really felt quite well, apart from

a drowsiness that was utterly superfluous after such a long sleep, and he was even unusually

hungry."

Scene II: The three memb ers of the family knock on his doors and talk to him from,

respectively, the hallway, the living room, and his sister's room . Gre gor 's fam ily are his

parasites, exploiting him, eating him out from the inside. This is his beetle itch in human terms.

The pathetic urge to find some protection from betrayal, cruelty, and filth is the factor that went

to form his carapace, his beetle shell, which at first seems hard and secure but eventually is seen

to be as vulnerable as his sick human flesh and spirit had been. Who of the three parasites—

father, mother, sister—is the most cruel? At first it would seem to be the father. But he is not the

worst: it is the sister, whom Gregor loves most but wh o betrays him beginning w ith the furniture

scene in the middle of the story. In the second scene the door theme begins: "there came a

cautious tap at the door behind the head of his bed. 'Gregor,' said a voice—it was his mother's—



'it's a quarter to seven. Hadn't you a train to catch?' That gentle voice! Gregor had a shock as he

heard his own voice answering hers, unmistakably his own voice, it was true, but with a

persistent pitiful squeaky undertone.... 'Yes, yes, thank you, Mother, I 'm getting up now.' The

wooden door between them must have kept the change in his voice from being noticeable

outside.... Yet this brief exchange of words had made the other members of the family aware that

Gregor was still in the house, as they had not expected, and at one of the side doors his fatherwas already knocking gently, yet with his fist. 'Gregor! Gregor!' he called, 'what's the matter with

you?' And after a while he called again in a deeper voice: 'Gregor! Gregor!' At the other side

door his sister was saying in a low, plaintive tone: 'Gregor? Aren't you well? Do you need

anyth ing?' He answ ered them both at once: 'I 'm jus t ready,' and did his best to ma ke his voice

sound as normal as possible by enunciating the words very clearly and leaving long pauses

between them. So his father went back to his breakfast, but his sister whispered: 'Gregor, open

the door, do.' However, he was not thinking of opening the door, and felt thankful for the prudent

habit he had acquired in traveling of locking all doors during the night, even at home."

Scene III: The getting out of bed ordeal in which man plans but beetle acts. Gregor still thinks of

his body in human terms, but now a human's lower part is a beetle's hind part, a human's upperpart is a beetle's fore part. A man on all fours seems to him to correspond to a beetle on all sixes.

He does not quite yet understand this and will persistently try to stand up on his third pair of legs.

"He thought that he might get out of bed with the lower part of his body first, but this lower part,

which he had not yet seen and of which he could form no clear conception, proved too difficult

to move; it was all so slow; and when at last almost savagely he gathered his forces together and

thrust out recklessly, he had miscalculated the direction and bumped heavily against the lower

end of the bed, and the burning pain he felt taught him that it was the lower part of his body that

probably for the time being was the most sensitive . . . But then he said to himself: 'Before it

strikes a quarter past seven I must be quite out of this bed, without fail. Anyhow, by that time

someone w ill have come from the offic e to ask what is the matter with me, since it opens before

seven.' And he set himself to rock ing his wh ole body at once in a regular series of jolts, w ith the

idea of swinging it out of the bed. If he tipped himself out in that way he could keep his head

from injury by lifting it at an acute angle when he fell. His back seemed to be hard and was not

likely to suffer from a fall on the carpet. His biggest worry was the loud crash he would not be

able to help making, which would probably cause anxiety, if not terror, behind all the doors.

Still, he mu st take the risk... W ell, ignoring the fact that the doors were all locked, ought he

really to call for help? In spite of his misery he could not suppress a smile at the very idea of it."

Scene IV: He is still struggling when the family theme, or the theme of the many doors, takes

over again, and in the course of this scene he fal ls out of bed at last, with a dull thud. The

conversation is a little on the lines of a Greek chorus. From Gregor's office the head clerk has

been sent to see why he has not yet turned up at the station. This grim speed in checking a remiss

employee has all the qualities of a bad dream. The speaking through doors, as in the second

scene, is now repeated. Note the sequence: the chief clerk talks to Gregor from the living room

on the left; Gregor's sister, Grete, talks to her brother from the room on the right; the mother and

father joi n the chief clerk in the living room. Gregor can still speak, but his voice beco me s m ore

and more indistinct, and soon his speech cannot he understood. (In Finnegans Wake, written

twenty years later by James Joyce, two washerwomen talking across a river are gradually



changed into a stout elm and a stone.) Gregor does not understand why his sister in the right-

hand room did not join the others. "She was probably ne wly out of bed and hadn 't even begun to

put on her clothes yet. Well, why was she crying? Because he wouldn't get up and let the chief

clerk in, because he was in danger of losing his job, and because the boss would begin dunning

his parents again for the old debts?" Poor Gregor is so accustomed to be just an instrument to be

used by his family that the question of pity does not arise: he does not even hope that Gretemight be sorry for him. Mother and sister call to each other from the doors across Gregor's room.

The sister and servant are dispatched for a doctor and a locksmith. "But Gregor was now much

calmer. The words he uttered were no longer understandable, apparently, although they seemed

clear enough to him, even clearer than before, perhaps because his ear had grown accustomed to

the sound of them. Yet at any rate people now believed that something was w rong with him, and

were ready to help him. The positive certainty with which these first measures had been taken

comforted him. He felt himself drawn once more into the human circle and hoped for great and

remarkable results from both the doctor and the locksmith, without really distinguishing

precisely between them."

Scene V: Gregor opens the door. "Slowly Gregor pushed the chair towards the door, then let go

of it, caught hold of the door for support—the soles at the end of his little legs were somewhat

sticky—and rested against it for a moment after his efforts. Then he set himself to turning the

key in the lock with his mouth. It seemed, unhappily, that he hadn't really any teeth—what could

he grip the key with?— but on the other hand his jaw s were certainly very stron g; with their help

he did manage to set the key in motion, heedless of the fact that he was undoubtedly damaging

them somewhere, since a brown fluid issued from his mouth, flowed over the key and dripped on

the floor. . . Since he had to pull the door toward s him, he was still invisible when it was really

wide open. He had to edge himself slowly round the near half of the double door, and to do it

very carefully if he was not to fall plump upon his back just on the threshold. He was still

carrying out this difficult manoeuvre, with no time to observe anything else, when he heard the

chief clerk utter a loud 'Oh!'—it sounded like a gust of wind—and now he could see the man,

standing as he was nearest to the door, clapping one hand before his open mouth and slowly

backing away as if driven by some invisible steady pressure. His mother— in spite of the chief

clerk's being there her hair was still undone and sticking up in all directions—first clasped her

hands and looked at his father, then took two steps towards Gregor and fell on the floor among

her outspread skirts, her face quite hidden on h er breast. His father knotted h is fist with a fierce

expression on his face as if he meant to knock Gregor back into his room, then looked

uncertainly round the living room, covered his eyes with his hands and wept till his great chest

heaved."

Scene VI: Gregor tries to calm the chief clerk so that he will not be discharged. "'Well,' said

Gregor, knowing perfectly that he was the only one who had retained any composure 'I 'll put my

clothes on at once, pack up my samples and start off. Will you only let me go? You see, sir, I 'm

not obstinate, and I'm willing to work; traveling is a hard life, but I couldn't live without it.

W here are you going, sir? To the of fice ? Ye s? Will you give a true account of all this? O ne can

be temporarily incapacitated, but that's just the mom ent for remem bering form er services and

bearing in mind that later on, when the incapacity has been got over, one will certainly work with



Scene II: The door theme continues and the duration theme settles in. We shall begin to witness

Gregor's usual day and dusk during this fantastic winter of 1912, and his discovery of the

security of the couch. But let us look and listen with Gregor through the crack of the parlor door

on the left. His father used to read aloud the newspapers to his wife and daughter. True, this has

now been interrupted and the flat is silent though not empty of occupants, but on the whole the

family is getting used to the situation. Here is the son and brother plunged into a monstrouschange that should have sent them scuttling out into the streets for help with shrieks and tears, in

wild compassion—but here they are, the three philistines, cosily taking it in their stride.

I don't know if you read a couple of years ago in the papers about that teenage girl and boy who

murdered the girl's mother. It starts with a very Kafkaesque scene: the girl's mother has come

home and found her daughter and the boy in the bedroom, and the boy has hit the mother with a

hamm er—several tim es—a nd dragged her away. But the woman is still thrashing and groaning

in the kitchen, and the boy says to his sweetheart, ' 'Gimme that hammer. I think I'll have to

knock her again." But the girl gives her mate a knife instead and he stabs the girl's mother many,

many times, to death—under the impression, probably, that this all is a comic strip: you hit a

person, the person sees lots of stars and exclamation marks but revives by and by, in the nextinstallment. Physical life however has no next installment, and soon boy and girl have to do

something with dead mother. "Oh, plaster of paris, it will dissolve her completely!" Of course, it

will— marvelous idea— place body in bathtub, cover with plaster, and that's all. Meanwhile, with

mother under the plaster (which does not work—wrong plaster, perhaps) boy and girl throw

several beer parties. What fun! Lovely canned music, and lovely canned beer. "But you can't go,

fellas, to the bathroom. The bathroom is a mess."

I'm trying to show you that in so-called real life we find sometimes a great resemblance to the

situation in Kafka's fantastic story. M ark the curious m entality of the morons in Kafk a who enjoy

their evening paper despite the fantastic horror in the middle of their apartment. " 'What a quiet

life our family has been leading,' said Gregor to himself, and as he sat there motionless staring

into the darkne ss he felt great pride in the fact that he had been able to provide such a life for his

parents and sister in such a fine flat." The room is lofty and empty and the beetle begins to

dominate the man. The high room "in which he had to lie flat on the floor filled him with an

apprehension he could not account for, since it had been his very own room for the past five

years—and with a half-unconscious action, not without a slight feeling of shame, he scuttled

under the couch, where he felt comfortable at once, although his back was a little cramped and

he could not lift his head up, and his only regret was that his body was too broad to get the whole

of it under the couch."

Scene III: Gregor's sister brings a selection of foods. She removes the basin of milk, not by

means of her bare hands but with a cloth, for it has been touched by the disgusting monster.

However, she is a clever little creature, that sister, and brings a whole selection—rotten

vegetables, old cheese, bones glazed with dead white sauce—and Gregor whizzed tow ards this

feast. "One after another and with tears of satisfaction in his eyes he quickly devoured the

cheese, the vegetables and the sauce; the fresh food, on the other hand, had no charms for him,

he could not even stand the smell of it and actually dragged away to some little distance the

things he could eat." The sister turns the key in the lock slowly as a warning that he should



retreat, and she comes and cleans up while Gregor, full of food, tries to hide under the couch.

Scene IV: Grete, the sister, takes on a new importance. It is she who feeds the beetle; she alone

enters the beetle's lair, sighing and with an occasional appeal to the saints—it is such a Christian

family. In a wond erful passage the cook goes down on her knees to Mrs. Samsa and begs toleave. With tears in her eyes she thanks the Samsas for allowing her to go—as if she were a

liberated slave—and without any prompting she swears a solemn oath that she will never say a

single word to anyone about what is happening in the Samsa household. "Gregor w as fed, once

in the early morning while his parents and the servant girl were still asleep, and a second time

after they had all had their midday dinner, for then his parents took a short nap and the servant

girl could be sent out on some errand or other by his sister. Not that they would have wanted him

to starve, of course, but perhaps they could not have borne to know more about his feeding than

from hearsay, perhaps too his sister wanted to spare them such little anxieties wherever possible,

since they had quite enough to bear as it was."

Scene V: This is a very distressing scene. It transpires that in his human past Gregor has been

deceived by his family. Gregor had taken that dreadful job with that nightmare firm because he

wished to help his father who five years ago had gone bankrupt. "They had simply got used to it,

both the family and Gregor; the money was gratefully accepted and gladly given, but there was

no special uprush of warm feeling. With his sister alone had he remained intimate, and it was a

secret plan of his that she, who loved music, unlike himself, and could play movingly on the

violin, should be sent next year to study at the School of Music, despite the great expense that

would entail, which must be made up in some other way. During his brief visits home the School

of Music was often mentioned in the talks he had with his sister, but always merely as a beautiful

dream which could never come true, and his parents discouraged even these innocent references

to it; yet Gregor had made up his mind firmly about it and meant to announce the fact with due

solemnity on Christmas Day." Gregor now overhears his father explaining "that a certain amount

of investments, a very small amount it was true, had survived the wreck of their fortunes and had

even increased a little because the dividends had not been touched meanwhile. And besides that,

the money G regor brought hom e every month— he had kept only a few dollars for himse lf—h ad

never been quite used up and now amounted to a small capital sum. Behind the door Gregor

nodded his head eagerly, rejoiced at his evidence of unexpected thrift and foresight. True, he

could really have paid off some more of his father's debts to the boss with this extra money, and

so brought much nearer the day on which he could quit his job, but doubtless it was better the

way his father had arranged it." The family believes this sum should be kept untouched for a

rainy day, but in the meantime how are the living expenses to be met? The father has not worked

for five years and could not be expected to do much. And Gregor's mother's asthma would keep

her from working. ' 'And was his sister to earn her bread, she who was still a child of seventeen

and whose life hitherto had been so pleasant, consisting as it did in dressing herself nicely,

sleeping long, helping in the housekeeping, going out to a few modest entertainments and above

all playing the violin? At first whenev er the need for earning mon ey w as mentioned Gregor let

go his hold on the door and threw himself down on the cool leather sofa beside it, he felt so hot

with shame and grief."



Scene VI: A new relationship begins between brother and sister, this time having to do with a

window instead of a door. Gregor "nerved himself to the great effort of pushing an armchair to

the window, then crawled up over the window sill and, braced against the chair, leaned against

the windowpanes, obviously in some recollection of the sense of freedom that looking out of a

window always used to give him." Gregor, or Kafka, seems to think that Gregor's urge to

approach the window was a recollection of human experience. Actually, it is a typical insectreaction to light: one finds all sorts of dusty bugs near windowpanes, a moth on its back, a lame

daddy longlegs, poor insects cobwebbed in a corner, a buzzing fly still trying to conquer the

glass pane. Gregor's human sight is growing dimmer so that he cannot see clearly even across the

street. The human detail is dominated by the insect general idea. (But let us not ourselves be

insects. Let us first of all study every detail in this story; the general idea w ill com e of itself later

when we have all the data we need.) His sister does not understand that Gregor has retained a

human heart, human sensitivity, a human sense of decorum, of shame, of humility and pathetic

pride. She disturbs him horribly by the noise and haste with which she opens the window to

breathe some fresh air, and she does not bother to conceal her disgust at the awful smell in his

den. Neither does she conceal her feelings when she actually sees him. One day, about a month

after Gregor's metamorphosis, "when there was surely no reason for her to be still startled at his

appearance, she came a little earlier than usual and found him gazing out of the window, quite

mo tionless, and thu s well placed to look like a bogey. . . She jum ped back as if in alarm and

banged the door shut; a stranger might well have thought that he had been lying in wait for her

there meaning to bite her. Of course he hid himself under the couch at once, but he had to wait

until midday before she came again, and she seemed more ill at ease than usual." These things

hurt, and nobody understood how they hurt. In an exquisite display of feeling, in order to spare

her the repulsive sight of him, Gregor one day "carried a sheet on his back to the couch—it cost

him four hours' labor—and arranged it there in such a way as to hide him completely, so that

even if she were to bend down she could not see him. . . Gregor even fancied that he caught a

thankful glance from her eye when he lifted the sheet carefully a very little with his head to see

how she was taking the new arrangement."

It should be noted how kind, how good our poor little monster is. His beetlehood, while

distorting and degrading his body, seems to bring out in him all his human sweetness. His utter

unselfishness, his constant preoccupation with the needs of others—this, against the backdrop of

his hideous plight comes out in strong relief. Kafka's art consists in accumulating on the one

hand, Gregor's insect features, all the sad detail of his insect disguise, and on the other hand, in

keeping vivid and limpid before the reader's eyes Gregor's sweet and subtle human nature.

Scene VII: Here occurs the furniture-moving scene. Two m onths have passed. Up to now only

his sister has been visiting him; but, Gregor says to himself, my sister is only a child; she has

taken on herself the job of caring for me me rely out of childish thoughtlessness. M y m other

should understand the situation better. So here in the seventh scene the mother, asthmatic, feeble,

and mudd leheaded , will enter his room for the first time. K afk a prepares the scene carefully. For

recreation Gregor had formed the habit of walking on the walls and ceiling. He is at the height of

the meagre bliss his beetlehood can produce. "His sister at once remarked the new distraction

Gregor had found for himself—he left traces behind him of the sticky stuff on his soles wherever



he crawled—and she got the idea in her head of giving him as wide a field as possible to crawl in

and of removing the pieces of furniture that hindered him, above all the chest of drawers and the

writing desk." Thus the mother is brought in to help move the furniture. She comes to his door

with e xclam ations of jo yfu l eagerness to see her son, an incongruou s and autom atic reaction that

is replaced by a certain hush when she enters the mysterious chamber. "Gregor's sister, of

course, went in first, to see that everything was in order before letting his mother enter. In greathaste Gregor pulled the sheet lower and rucked it more in folds so that it really looked as if it had

been thrown accidentally over the couch. And this time he did not peer out from under it; he

renounced the pleasure of seeing his mother on this occasion and was only glad that she had

come at all. "Come in, he's out of sight," said his sister, obviously leading her mother in by the

hand.

The wom en struggle to move the heavy furniture until his mother voices a certain hum an

thought, naive but kind, feeble but not devoid of feeling, when she says: 'Doesn't it look as if we

were showing him, by taking away his furniture, that we have given up hope of his ever getting

better and are jus t leaving him coldly to him self? I think it would be best to keep his roomexactly as it has always been, so that when he comes back to us he will find everything

unchanged and be able all the more easily to forget what has happened in between." Gregor is

torn between two emotions. His beetlehood suggests that an empty room with bare walls would

be more convenient for crawling about—all he needed would be some chink to hide in, his

indispensable couch— but otherwise he would not need all those human conveniences and

adornments. But his mother 's voice reminds him of his human background. U nfortunately, his

sister has developed a queer self-assurance and has grown accustomed to consider herself an

expert in Gregor s affairs as against her parents. "Another factor might have been also the

enthusiastic temperament of an adolescent girl, which seeks to indulge itself on every

opportunity and which now tempted Grete to exaggerate the horror of her brother's

circumstances in order that she might do all the more for him." This is a curious note: the

domineering sister, the strong sister of the fairy tales, the handsome busybody lording it over the

fool of the family, the proud sisters of Cinderella, the cruel emblem of health, youth, and

blossoming beauty in the house of disaster and dust. So they decide to move the things out after

all but have a real struggle with the chest of drawers. Gregor is in an awful state of panic. He

kept his fretsaw in that chest, with which he used to make things when he was free at home, his

sole hobby.

Scene VIII: Gregor tries to save at least the picture in the frame he had made with his cherished

fretsaw. Kafka varies his effects in that every time the beetle is seen by his family he is shown in

a new position, some n ew spot. Here Gregor rushes from his hiding place, unseen by the two

women now struggling with his writing desk, and climbs the wall to press himself over the

picture, his hot, dry belly against the soothing cool glass. The mother is not much help in this

furniture-moving business and has to be supported by Grete. Grete always remains strong and

hale whereas not only her brother but both parents are going to be soon (after the apple-pitching

scene) on the brink of sinking into some dull dream, into a state of torpid and decrepit oblivion;

but Grete with the hard health of her ruddy adolescence keeps propping them up.



Scene IX: Des pite Grete's efforts, the mo ther catches sight of Gregor, a "huge brow n m ass on

the flowered wallpaper, and before she was really conscious that what she saw was G regor

screamed in a loud, hoarse voice: 'Oh God, oh God!', fell with outspread arms over the couch as

if giving up and did not move. 'Gregor!' cried his sister, shaking her fist and glaring at him. This

was the first time she had directly addressed him since his metamorphosis.' ' She runs into the

living room for som ething to rouse her mother from the fainting fit. Gregor wanted to help too —there was still time to rescue the picture—but he was stuck fast to the glass and had to tear

himself loose; he then ran after his sister into the next room as if he could advise her, as he used

to do; but then had to stand helplessly behind her; she meanwhile searched among various small

bottles and when she turned round started in alarm at the sight of him; one bottle fell on the floor

and broke; a splinter of glass cut Gregor's face and some kind of corrosive medicine splashed

him; without pausing a moment longer Grete gathered up all the bottles she could carry and ran

to her mother with them; she banged the door shut with her foot. Gregor was now cut off from

his mother, who w as perhaps nearly dying because of him; he dared not open the door for fear of

frightening away his sister, who had to stay with her mother; there was nothing he could do but

wait; and harassed by self-reproach and worry he began now to crawl to and fro, over everything,

walls, furniture and ceiling, and finally in his despair, when the whole room seemed to be reeling

around him, fell down on to the middle of the big table." There is a change in the respective

position of the various members of the family. Mother (on the couch) and sister are in the middle

room; Gregor is in the corner in the left room. And presently his father comes home and enters

the living room. "And so Gregor fled to the door of his own room and crouched against it, to let

his father see as soon as he came in from the hall that his son had the good intention of getting

back into his own room immediately and that it was not necessary to drive him there, but that if

only the door were opened he would disappear at once."

Scene X: The apple-pelting scene comes now. Gregor's father has changed and is now at the

summit of his power. Instead of the man who used to lie wearily sunk in bed and could scarcely

wave an arm in greeting and when he went out shuffled along laboriously with a crook-handled

stick, "Now he was standing there in fine shape; dressed in a smart blue uniform with gold

buttons, such as bank messengers wear; his strong double chin bulged over the stiff high collar of

his jacket; from under his bushy eyebrows his black eyes darted fresh and penetrating glances;

his onetime tangled white hair had been combed flat on either side of a shining and carefully

exact parting. He pitched his cap, which bore a gold monogram, probably the badge of some

bank, in a wide sweep across the whole room on to a sofa and with the tail-ends of his jacket

thrown back, his hands in his trouser pockets, advanced with a grim visage towards Gregor.

Likely enough he did not himself know what he meant to do; at any rate he lifted his feet

uncom monly high and Gregor was dum bfounded at the enormous size of his shoe soles."

As usual, Gregor is tremendously interested in the movem ent of human legs, big thick human

feet, so different from his own flim mering appendages. W e have a repetition of the slow m otion

theme (The chief clerk, backing and shuffling, had retreated in slow motion.) Now father and son

slowly circle the room: indeed, the whole operation hardly looked like pursuit it was carried out

so slowly. And then his father starts to bombard Gregor with the only missiles that the living-

dining room could provide—apples, small red apples—and Gregor is driven back into the middle



room, back to the heart of his beetlehood. "An apple thrown without much force grazed Gregor's

back and glanced off harmlessly. But another following immediately landed right on his back

and sank in; Gregor wanted to drag himself forward, as if this startling, incredible pain could be

left behind him; but he felt as if nailed to the spot and flattened himself out in a complete

derangement of all his senses. With his last conscious look he saw the door of his room being

torn open and his mother rushing out ahead of his screaming sister, in her underbodice, for herdaughter had loosened her clothing to ler her breathe more freely and recover from her swoon; he

saw his mother rushing towards his father, leaving one after another behind her on the floor her

loosened petticoats, stumbling over her petticoats straight to his father and embracing him, in

complete union with him — but here Gregor 's sight began to fail—w ith her hands clasped round

his father's neck as she begged for her son's life."

This is the end of part two. Let us sum up the situation. The sister has become frankly

antagonistic to her brother. She may have loved him once, but now she regards him with disgust

and anger. In Mrs. Samsa asthma and emotion struggle. She is a rather mechanical mother, with

some mechanical mother love for her son, but we shall soon see that she, too, is ready to givehim up. The father, as already remarked, has reached a certain summit of impressive strength and

brutality. From the very first he had been eager to hurt physically his helpless son, and now the

apple he has thrown has become embedded in poor Gregor 's beetle flesh.

PART THREE

Scene I: "The serious injury done to Gregor, which disabled him for more than a mo nth— the

apple went on sticking in his body as a visible reminder, since no one ventured to remove it—seemed to have m ade even his father recollect that Gregor was a mem ber of the family, despite

his present unfortunate and repulsive shape, and ought not to be treated as an enemy, that, on the

contrary, family duty required the suppression of disgust and the exercise of patience, nothing

but patience." The door theme is taken up again since now, in the evening, the door leading from

Gregor's darkened room to the lighted living room is left open. This is a subtle situation. In the

previous scene father and mother had reached their highest point of energy, he in his resplendent

uniform pitching those little red bombs, em blems of fruitfulness and manliness; and she, the

mother, actually moving furniture despite her frail breathing tubes. But after that peak there is a

fall, a weakening. It would almost seem that the father himself is on the point of disintegrating

and becoming a feeble beetle. Through the opened door a curious current seems to pass. Gregor's

beetle illness is catching, his father seems to have caught it, the weakness, the drabness, the dirt.

"Soon after supper his father would fall asleep in his armchair; his mother and sister would

admonish each other to be silent; his mother, bending low over the lamp, stitched at fine sewing

for an underwear firm; his sister. who had taken a job as a salesgirl, was learnin g shorthand and

French in the evenings on the chance of bettering herself. Sometimes his father woke up, and as

if quite unaware that he had been sleeping said to the mother: 'What a lot of sewing you're doing

today!' and at once fell asleep again, while the women exchanged a tired smile.



"With a kind of mulishness his father persisted in keeping his uniform on even in the house; his

dressing gown hung, uselessly on its peg and he slept fully dressed where he sat, as if he were

ready for service at any mom ent and even here only at the beck and call of his superior. As a

result, his uniform, which was not brand new to start with, began to look dirty, despite all the

loving care of the mother and sister to keep it clean, and Gregor often spent whole evenings

gazing at the many greasy spots on the garment, gleaming with gold buttons always in a highstate of polish, in which the old man sat sleeping in extreme discomfort and yet quite

peacefully." The father always refused to go to bed when the time had arrived, despite every

inducement offered by the mother and sister, until f inally the two wom en w ould hoist him up by

his armpits from the chair, "And leaning on the two of them he would heave himself up, with

difficulty , as if he were a great burden to him self, suff er them to lead him as far as the door and

then wave them off and go on alone, while the mother abandoned her needlework and the sister

her pen in order to run after him and help him farther." The father's uniform comes close to

resembling that of a big but somewhat tarnished scarab. His tired overworked family must get

him from one room to another and to bed.

Scene II: The disintegration of the Samsa family continues. They dismiss the servant girl and

engage a still cheaper charwoman, a gigantic bony creature who comes in to do the rough work.

You m ust remem ber that in Prague, 1912, it was m uch m ore difficu lt to clean and cook than in

Ithaca, 1954. They have to sell various family ornaments. "But what they lamented most was the

fact that they could not leave the flat which was much too big for their present circumstances

because they could not think of any way to shift Gregor. Yet Gregor saw well enough that

consideration for him was not the main difficulty preventing the removal, for they could have

easily shifted him in some suitable box with a few air holes in it; what really kept them from

moving into another flat was rather their own complete hopelessness and the belief that they had

been singled out for a misfortune such as had never happened to any of their relations or

acquaintances.' ' The family is completely egotistic and has no more strength left after fulfilling

its daily obligations.

Scene III: A last flash of human recollections comes to Gregor's mind, prompted by the still

living urge in him to help his family. He even remembers vague sweethearts, "but instead of

helping him and his family they were one and all unapproachable and he was glad when they

vanished." This scene is mainly devoted to Grete, who is now clearly the villain of the piece.

"His sister no longer took thought to bring him what might especially please him, but in the

morning and at noon before she went to business hurriedly pushed into his room with her foot

any food that was available, and in the evening cleared it out again with one sweep of the broom,

heedless of whether it had been merely tasted, or—as m ost frequently happened— left untouched.

The cleaning of his room, which she now did always in the evenings, could not have been more

hastily done. Streaks of dirt stretched along the walls, here and there lay balls of dust and filth.

At first Gregor used to station himself in some particularly filthy corner when his sister arrived in

order to reproach her with it, so to speak. But he could have sat there for weeks without getting

her to make any improvement; she could see the dirt as well as he did, but she had simply made

up her mind to leave it alone. And yet, with a touchiness that was new to her, which seemed



anyhow to have infected the whole fam ily, she jealously guarded her claim to be the sole

caretaker of Gregor's room." Once when his mother had given the room a thorough cleaning with

several buckets of water— the dam pness upset Gregor—a grotesque fam ily row ensues. The

sister bursts into a storm of weeping while her parents look on in helpless amazement; "then they

too began to go into action; the father reproached the mother on his right for not having left the

cleaning of Gregor's room to his sister; shrieked at the sister on his left that never again was sheto be allowed to clean Gregor's room; while the mother tried to pull the father into his bedroom,

since he was beyond himself with agitation; the sister, shaken with sobs, then beat upon the table

with her small fists; and Gregor hissed loudly with rage because not one of them thought of

shutting the door to spare him such a spectacle and so much noise."

Scene IV: A curious relationship is established between Gregor and the bony charwoman who is

rather amused by him, not frightened at all, and in fact she rather likes him. "Come along, then,

you old dung beetle," she says. And it is raining outside, the first sign of spring perhaps.

Scene V: The lodgers arrive, the three bearded boarders, with a passion for order. These are

mechanical beings; their beards are masks of respectability but actually they are shoddy

scoundrels, these serious-looking gentlemen. In this scene a great change comes over the

apartment. The boarders take the parents' bedroom on the far left of the flat, beyond the living

room. The parents move across to the sister's room on the right of Gregor's room, and Grete has

to sleep in the living room but has now no room of her own since the lodgers take their meals in

the living room and spend their evenings there. Moreover, the three bearded boarders have

brought into this furnished flat some furniture of their own. They have a fiendish love for

superficial tidiness, and all the odds and ends which they do not need go into Gregor's room.

This is exactly the opposite to what had been happening in the furniture scene of part two, scene

7, where there had been an attempt to move everything out of Gregor's room. Then we had the

ebb of the furniture, now the return flow , the jetsa m wash ed back, all kinds of jun k pou ring in;

and curiously enough Gregor, though a very sick beetle—the apple wound is festering, and he is

starving—finds some beetle pleasure in crawling among all that dusty rubbish. In this fifth scene

of part three where all the changes come, the alteration in the family meals is depicted. The

mechanical m ovemen t of the bearded autom atons is matched by the automatic reaction of the

Samsas. The lodgers "set themselves at the top end of the table where formerly Gregor and his

father and mother had eaten their meals, unfolded their napkins and took knife and fork in hand.

At once his mother appeared in the other doorway with a dish of meat and close behind her his

sister with a dish of potatoes piled high. The food steamed with a thick vapor. The lodgers bent

over the food set before them as if to scrutinize it before eating, in fact the man in the middle,

who seemed to pass for an authority with the other two, cut a piece of meat as it lay on the dish,

obviously to discover if it were tender or should be sent back to the kitchen. He showed

satisfaction, and Gregor's mother and sister, who had been watching anxiously, breathed freely

and began to smile." Gregor's keen envious interest in large feet will be recalled; now toothless

Gregor is also interested in teeth. "It seemed remarkable to Gregor that among the various noises

coming from the table he could always distinguish the sound of their masticating teeth, as if this

were a sign to Gregor that one needed teeth in order to eat, and that with toothless jaws even of

the finest make one could do nothing. 'I 'm hungry enough,' said Gregor sadly to himself, 'but not



for that kind of food. Ho w these lodgers are stuffing themselves, and here am I dying of

starvation!' "

Scene VI: In this great music scene the lodgers have heard Grete playing the violin in the

kitchen, and in automatic reaction to the entertainment value of music they suggest that she playfor them. The three roomers and the three Samsas gather in the living room.

Without wishing to antagonize lovers of music, I do wish to point out that taken in a general

sense music, as perceived by its consumers, belongs to a more primitive, more animal form in

the scale of arts than literature or painting. I am taking music as a whole, not in terms of

individual creation, imagination, and composition, all of which of course rival the art of literature

and painting, but in term s of the impact m usic has on the average listener. A great compose r, a

great writer, a great painter are brothers. But I think that the impact music in a generalized and

primitive form has on the listener is of a more lowly quality than the impact of an average book

or an average picture. What I especially have in mind is the soothing, lulling, dulling influence ofmusic on some people such as of the radio or records.

In Kafka's tale it is merely a girl pitifully scraping on a fiddle and this corresponds in the piece to

the canned music or plugged-in music of today. W hat Ka fka felt about music in general is what I

have just described: its stupefying, numbing, animallike quality. This attitude must be kept in

mind in interpreting an important sentence that has been misunderstood by some translators.

Literally, it reads "Was Gregor an animal to be so affected by music?" That is, in his human

form he had cared little for it but in this scene, in his beetlehood, he succumbs: "He felt as if the

way were opening before him to the unknown nourishment he craved." The scene goes as

follows. Gregor's sister begins to play for the lodgers. Gregor is attracted by the playing and

actually puts his head into the living room. "He felt hardly any surprise at his growing lack of

consideration for the others; there had been a time when he prided himself on being considerate.

And yet jus t on this occasion he had m ore reason than ever to hide himself since owing to the

amount of dust which lay thick in his room and rose into the air at the slightest movement he too

was covered with dust; fluff and hair and remnants of food trailed with him, caught on his back

and along his sides; his indifference to everything was much too great for him to turn on his back

and scrape himself clean on the carpet as once he had done several times a day. And in sprite of

his condition no shame deterred him from advancing a little over the spotless floor of the living

room."

At first no one was aware of him. The lodgers, disappointed in their expectation of hearing good

violin playing, were clustered near the window whispering among them selves and waiting for the

music to stop. And yet, to Gregor his sister was playing beautifully. He "crawled a little farther

forward and lowered his head to the ground so that it might be possible for his eyes to meet hers.

W as he an animal that mu sic had such an effect upon him? H e felt as if the way we re op ening

before him to the unknow n nourishmen t he craved. He was determined to push forward till he

reached his sister, to pull at her skirt and so let her know that she was to come into his room with



her violin for no one here appreciated her playing as he wou ld app reciate it. He wou ld never let

her out of his room, at least not so long as he lived; his frightful appearance would become for

the first time useful to him; he would watch all the doors of his room at once and spit at

intruders; but his sister should need no constraint, she should stay with him of her own free will;

she should sit beside him on the couch, bend down her ear to him and hear him confide that he

had had the firm intention of sending her to the School of Music, and that, but for his mishap,last Christmas— surely C hristmas was long past?—he would have announced it to everybody

without allowing a single objection. After this confession his sister would be so touched that she

would burst into tears, and Gregor would then raise himself to her shoulder and kiss her on the

neck, which, now that she went to business, she kept free of any ribbon or collar."

Suddenly the middle lodger sees Gregor, but instead of driving Gregor out the father tries to

soothe the lodgers and (in a reversal of his actions) "spreading out his arms, tried to urge them

back into their own room and at the same time to block their view of Gregor. They now began

to be really a little angry, one could not tell wh ether becau se of the old man's behavio r or

because it had just dawned on them that all unwittingly they had such a neighbor as Gregor nextdoor. They demanded explanations of his father, they waved their arms like him, tugged uneasily

at their beards and only with reluctance backed towards their room." The sister rushes into the

lodgers' room and quickly makes up their beds, but "The old man seemed once more to be so

possessed by his mulish self-assertiveness that he was forgetting all the respect he should show

to his lodgers. He kept driving them on and driving them on until in the very door of the

bedroom the middle lodger stamped his foot loudly on the floor and so brought him to a halt. 'I

beg to announce,' said the lodger, lifting one hand and looking also at Gregor's mother and sister,

'that because of the disgusting conditions prevailing in this household and family'—here he spat

on the floor with emphatic brevity—'I give you notice on the spot. Naturally I won't pay you a

penny for the days I have lived here; on the contrary I shall consider bringing an action for

damages against you based on claims—believe me—that will be easily susceptible of proof.' He

ceased and stared straight in front of him, as if he expected something. In fact his two friends at

once rushed into the breach with these words: 'And we too give notice on the spot.' On that he

seized the door-handle and shut the door with a slam."

Scene VII: The sister is completely unmasked; her betrayal is absolute and fatal to Gregor. " 'I

won't utter my brother's name in the presence of this creature, and so all I say is: we must try to

get rid of it....

" 'We must try to get rid of it,' his sister now said explicitly to her father, since her mother was

coughing too much to hear a word. 'It will be the death of both of you, I can see that coming.

When one has to work as hard as we do, all of us, one can't stand this continual torment at home

on top of it. At least I can't stand it any longer.' And she burst into such a passion of sobbing that

her tears dropped on her mother's face, where she wiped them off mechanically." Both the father

and sister agree that Gregor cannot understand them and hence no agreement with him is

possible.



" 'He must go,' cried Gregor's sister, 'that's the only solution, Father. You must just try to get rid

of the idea that this is Gregor. The fa ct that we 've believed it for so long is the root of all our

trouble. But how can it be Gregor? If this were Gregor, he would have realized long ago that

human beings can't live with such a creature and he'd have gone away on his own accord. Then

we w ouldn't have any brother, but we'd be able to go on living and keep his memory in honor.

As it is, this creature persecutes us, drives away our lodgers, obviously wants the wholeapartment to himself and would have us all sleep in the gutter.' "

That he has disappeared as a human brother and should now disappear as a beetle deals Gregor

the last blow. P ainfully, because he is so weak and m aimed, he crawls back to his own room . A t

the doorway he turns and his last glance falls on his mother, who was, in fact, almost asleep.

"Hardly was he well inside his room when the door was hastily pushed shut, bolted and locked.

The sudden noise in his rear startled him so much that his little legs gave beneath him. It was his

sister who had shown such haste. She had been standing ready waiting and had made a light

spring forward. Gregor had not even heard her coming, and she cried 'At last!' to her parents as

she turned the key in the lock." In his darkened room Gregor discovers that he cannot move andthough he is in pain it seems to be passing away. ' 'The rotting apple in his back and the inflamed

area around it, all covered with soft dust, already hardly troubled him. He thought of his family

with tenderness and love. The decision that he must disappear was one that he held to even more

strongly than his sister, if that were possible. In this state of vacant and peaceful meditation he

remained until the tower clock struck three in the morning. The first broadening of light in the

world outside the window entered his consciousness once more. Then his head sank to the floor

of its own accord and from his nostrils came the last faint flicker of his breath."

Scene VIII: Gregor's dead, dry body is discovered the next morning by the charwoman and a

great warm sense of relief permeates the insect world of his despicable family. Here is a point tobe observed with care and love. Gregor is a human being in an insect's disguise; his family are

insects disguised as people. With Gregor's death their insect souls are suddenly aware that they

are free to enjoy themselves. " 'Come in beside us, Grete, for a little while,' said Mrs. Samsa*

with a tremulous smile, and Grete, not without looking back at the corpse, followed her parents

into their bedroom.'' The charwom an opens the window w ide and the air has a certain warmth: it

is the end of March when insects come out of hibernation.

* In a note in his annotated copy Nabokov observes that after Gregor's death it is never "father" and "mother" but

only Mr. and Mrs. Samsa.

Scene IX: We get a wonderful glimpse of the lodgers as they sullenly ask for their breakfast butinstead are shown Gregor's corpse. "So they entered and stood around it, with their hands in the

pockets of their shabby coats, in the middle of the room already bright with sunlight." What is

the key wo rd here? Shabby in the sun. As in a fairy tale, in the happy end of a fairy tale, the evil

charm is dissipated with the magician's death. The lodgers are seen to be seedy, they are no

longer dangerous, whereas on the other hand the Samsa family ascends again, gains in power and

lush vitality. The scene ends with a repetition of the staircase theme, just as the chief clerk had

retreated in slow motion, clasping the banisters. At the orders of Mr. Samsa that they m ust leave



the lodg ers are quelled. "In the hall they all three took their hats fro m the rack, their sticks from

the umbrella stand, bowed in silence and quitted the apartment." Down they go now, three

bearded borders, automatons, clockwork puppets, while the Samsa family leans over the

banisters to watch them descend. The staircase as it winds down through the apartment house

imitates, as it were, an insect's jointed legs; and the lodgers now disappear, now come to view

again, as they descend lower and lower, from landing to landing, from articulation to articulation.At one point they are met by an ascending butcher boy with his basket who is first seen rising

towards them, then above them, in proud deportment with his basket full of red steaks and

luscious innards—red raw meat, the breeding place of fat shiny flies.

Scene X: The last scene is superb in its ironic simplicity. The spring sunshine is with the Samsa

family as they write their three letters—articulation, jointed legs, happy legs, three insects

writing three letters of excuse to their employers. "They decided to spend this day in resting and

going for a stroll; they had not only deserved such a respite from work, but absolutely needed it."

As the charwoman leaves after her morning's work, she giggles amiably as she inform s the

family: " 'you don't need to bother about how to get rid of the thing next door. It's been seen toalready.' Mrs. Samsa and Grete bent over their letters again, as if preoccupied; Mr. Samsa, who

perceived that she was eager to begin describing it all in detail, stopped her with a decisive hand.

" 'She'll be given notice tonight,' said Mr. Samsa, but neither from his wife nor his daughter did

he get any answer, for the charwoman seemed to have shattered again the composure they had

barely achieved. They rose, went to the window and stayed there, clasping each other tight. Mr.

Samsa turned in his chair to look at them and quietly observed them for a little. Then he called

out: 'Come along, now, do. Let bygones be bygones. A nd you m ight have some consideration for

me.' The two of them complied at once, hastened to him, caressed him and quickly finished their

letters.

' 'Then they all three left the apartment together, which was more than they had done for months,

and went by trolley into the open country outside the town. The trolley, in which they were the

only passengers, was filled with warm sunshine. Leaning comfortably back in their seats they

canvassed their prospects for the future, and it appeared on closer inspection that these were not

at all bad, for the jobs they had got, which so far they had never really discussed with each other,

were all three admirable and likely to lead to better things later on. The greatest immediate

improvem ent in their condition wou ld of course arise from m oving to another house; they

wanted to take a smaller and cheaper but also better situated and more easily run apartment than

the one they had, which Gregor had selected. While they were thus conversing, it struck both Mr.

and Mrs. Samsa, almost at the same moment, as they became aware of their daughter's increasing

vivacity, that in spite of all the sorrow of recent times, which had made her cheeks pale, she had

bloomed into a buxom girl. They grew quieter and half unconsciously exchanged glances of

complete agreement, having come to the conclusion that it would soon be time to find a good

husband for her. And it was like a confirmation of their new dreams and excellent intentions that

at the end of their journey their daughter sprang to her feet first and stretched her young body."*



* "Th e soul has died with Gregor; the healthy young animal takes over. The parasites have fattened themselve s on

Gregor. " Nabo kov's note in his annotated copy.

Let me sum up various of the main themes of the story.

1. The number three plays a considerable role in the story. The story is divided into three parts.

There are three doors to Gregor's room. His family consists of three people. Three servants

appear in the course of the story. Three lodgers have three beards. Three Samsas write three

letters. I am very careful not to overwork the significance of symbols, for once you detach a

symbol from the artistic core of the book, you lose all sense of enjoyment. The reason is that

there are artistic symbols and there are trite, artificial. or even imbecile symbols. You will find a

number of such inept sym bols in the psychoanalytic and m ythological approach to Kafk a's work,

in the fashionable mixture of sex and myth that is so appealing to mediocre minds. In other

words, symbols may be original and symbols may be stupid and trite. And the abstract symbolic

value of an artistic achievement should never prevail over its beautiful burning life.

So, the only emblematic or heraldic rather than symbolic meaning is the stress which is laid upon

three in "The Metamorphosis." It has really a technical meaning. The trinity, the triplet, the triad,

the triptych are obvious art forms such as, say, three pictures of youth, ripe years, and old age, or

any other threefold triplex subject. Triptych means a picture or carving in three compartments

side by side, and this is exactly the effec t that Ka fka achieves, fo r instance, with his three room s

in the beginning of the story—living room, Gregor's bedroom, and sister's room, with Gregor in

the central one. Moreover, a threefold pattern suggests the three acts of a play. And finally it

must be observed that Kafka's fantasy is emphatically logical; what can be more characteristic of

logic than the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. We shall, thus, limit the Kafka symbol ofthree to its aesthetic and logical significance and completely disregard whatever myths the sexual

mythologists read into it under the direction of the Viennese witch doctor.

2. Another thematic line is the theme of the doors, of the opening and closing of doors that runs

through the whole story.

3. A third thematic line concerns the ups and downs in the well-being of the Samsa family, the

subtle state of balance between their flourishing condition and Gregor's desperate and pathetic

condition.

There are a few other subthemes but the above are the only ones essential for an understanding

of the story.



You will mark Kafka's style. Its clarity, its precise and formal intonation in such striking contrast

to the nightmare matter of his tale. No poetical metaphors ornament his stark black-and-white

story. The limpidity of his style stresses the dark richness of his fantasy. Contrast and unity, style

and matter, manner and plot are most perfectly integrated.

Copyright the Estate of Vladimir Nabokov

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